Allowing armed forces recruiters greater flexibility isn’t dropping standards, but capturing talent
3 min read
Barely six weeks, a blue jumper and a few forms later, I was in. But my experience of joining the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the 1980s would be unrecognisable today.
For me, growing up in a working-class home, the uniform was an engine of social mobility; taking me to places I might never have been, and giving me opportunities I would never have had. Never did I imagine that the RAF might have needed me more than I needed it.
Yet in 2025, Britain’s armed forces now gain just five recruits for every eight personnel they lose. Since 1999, only six years have seen a net increase in UK regulars. That’s an unsustainable situation, and raises serious questions over the UK’s future deployment capability.
The next Nelson may be walking into a recruitment office tomorrow; we cannot afford to turn them away
Retaining experienced personnel is one side of the coin – a challenge driven by visible pay and working conditions, service accommodation, flexible family arrangements and effective complaint procedures – but when recruiting targets are missed year after year, there are much longer-term implications.
Privately, senior officers tell me stories of enthusiastic young recruits – highly-qualified with stints in the cadets or even other branches – waiting 10 or 11 months to gain employment in the forces due to longstanding weaknesses in the recruitment process.
Faced with lengthy delays, many promising young people eventually give up or pursue alternatives. In November, the Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed to the Defence Select Committee that in the past 10 years more than three-quarters of a million applicants have neither been accepted nor rejected, but have simply abandoned their application.
A true tri-service, fully digital application process is now on the way for a system where, astonishingly, medical screening still forces physical copies of a recruit’s medical history to be obtained from a GP.
In some cases, the actual tick boxes used to screen candidates stretch credibility. In September, the Ministry of Defence announced that petty rules on acne and asthma would be overhauled – but this was long overdue. Other minor medical conditions that would have been ignored 30 years ago still might not disqualify a candidate entirely, but will prompt a long manual review process: more time lost and inevitably, fewer recruits signed up successfully.
That spares the armed forces extra responsibilities, but as the need for personnel grows more urgent, we must ask how much priceless talent is being excluded.
That raises the thorniest question of all: if the armed forces desperately need technical skills in cyber, engineering, and new technical disciplines barely even invented, perhaps the recruiting sergeant must consider people who simply don’t fit the mould.
Not just those with other more lucrative career options, but those who have never identified with forces’ culture, or might even struggle to pass basic fitness tests. Utter heresy! At least to a certain kind of insufferable golf club colonel.
Yet from Sir William Congreve to Sir Barnes Wallis, the history of the British armed forces is the story of eccentric outsiders and groundbreaking innovation. The next Horatio Nelson may be walking into a recruitment office tomorrow, and we cannot afford to turn them away.
So tough. The old club ties may just have to lump it. The world has become more hostile; the UK has a personnel crisis, and defending King and country is more important than sticking by convention. In recent years, forces’ recruitment campaigns have begun to focus not on what recruits are but on what they could be, given the opportunity. That pitch cuts both ways, so it’s time for that recruiting sergeant to be allowed to make some judgement calls.
Ian Roome, Liberal Democrat MP for North Devon and member of the Defence Select Committee
